A Health Crisis Forged a Better Business - On Purpose Projects

 In this episode, Natasha Golinsky shares how a personal health crisis pulled her out of day-to-day operations and revealed a hard truth: the business didn’t actually need her to function. This conversation will challenge how you think about control, leadership, and the importance of building succession into your business.

Key Takeaways

•  Why founder dependency is a bigger risk than you think 
•  The power of letting your team fail and why it’s necessary for growth 
•  How to build succession into your agency (before you need it) 

Transcript

On Purpose Projects

Russel 0:06

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where owners and experts share the real journey, the early struggles, the breakthrough moments, and everything in between.

0:15

I'm your host Russel Dubree, former eight figure agency owner, turned Business coach. Sold

Meet Natasha

Russel 0:20

my agency and now helps agency leaders create their ideal business. Every agency has a story, and this is your front row seat. This is an agency story. Welcome to the show today,

0:37

everyone. I have Natasha Golinsky with On Purpose

Russel 0:41

Projects with us here today. Thank you so much for joining us today, Natasha.

Natasha 0:45

Oh my God. Thanks for having me Russel.

Russel 0:47

I'm excited. We've known each other for a little bit, but for those that don't know you, if you don't mind doing a quick, what does on Purpose projects do and who do you do it for?

Natasha 0:57

Great question. Thank you. We are an 11-year-old full stack web development agency. We used to be a design and dev and nine years in, I just got burnt out on the creative side. We killed off our design department, and now we are for dev only. We work across any tech stack so we can do Shopify React, WordPress web flow. We are have not like gotten into the Drupal Magento scene and I don't think we're going to, but we typically work actually alongside other female agency owners, which is an interesting niche. Like me being an agency owner myself, it just started happening that my peers and my colleagues didn't have a solid full stack person around. They had their front end people, but they didn't actually have a full stack anything. And it's so funny'cause in 10 and a half years of running the agency, I'm the only woman I've ever met who does what I do. And uh, so it's pretty fun. So yeah, so a couple years ago we made that like positioning pivot outta working B2C. Now we work more B2B, and so most of my clients are like my friends, my colleagues, my peers, and we get to build really cool stuff working with them. So,

From No Experience to Starting an Agency

Russel 1:57

well that sounds cool. I wanna find out a lot more about that, but we gotta get to the earlier parts of your story before we get there. So if you don't mind, share with us a little bit about Young Natasha. How did she come up in the world?

Natasha 2:11

Oh my God. Going back to the agency life, I actually was a management consultant in the nonprofit sector. I was always really involved with social justice, social enterprise, nonprofits, things like that. And I was working while I was, I had three kids under the age of three and I was like working from home. And I, at that point. I had been working as a management consultant and I had a client who was looking for help with his website and he's like, can you find someone just to help me fix whatever he was trying to fix? And I was like, yeah, for sure. No worries. And I went to Upwork, hired a guy in Bangladesh, I think for like whatever, six bucks an hour. No idea what was going on. I didn't know what WordPress was. I had no idea what anything was. And he came in, he fixed it. And then it became that my client was like, my, one of my partners, the KISS sites acting kind of weird. Could you guy take a look at it? And I was like, yeah, sure, why not? And it's evolving. So I've literally had a team since day one. I've never built a website in my life. I'm not a tech person. I, uh, the other day I was trying to set up my Bluetooth device on my car and I was like having a meltdown and I, one of my kids had to come out and like, save the day because my tech skills are not good. And um, so I run, yeah, like a full stack team, no idea what they do. I know how to lead them. My background's all in management, consulting and leadership and project management and things like that. My job was always like the management, the money and the marketing, and so people who know me, they're like, you do what Exactly. They're like, I don't, I don't see it. Like I don't get it. So like, yeah.

Russel 3:37

Great. Well, I'm glad you're not. I'm not the only one in the world, so I actually started an agency with, sounds like a same, similar level of experience or lack of experience and

Natasha 3:47

dental agency right.

Russel 3:48

Yes. Learned enough to be dangerous, but never learned how to actually do the craft itself, so I can, I can fully appreciate that. I mean, did you think about when young Natasha was coming up in the world, did you think you'd end up being a, a business owner?

Natasha 4:01

Yeah, i've actually always been a business owner. I've been right, working for myself since I was like 12 years old, so I've actually never had a job. I've never,

Russel 4:10

never, never, ever had like a, a real job.

Natasha 4:12

Well, when I was in high school I worked at a restaurant, but I've never

Russel 4:15

an adult.

Natasha 4:17

As an adult. I've never had a job. I've always been self-employed.

Russel 4:21

Okay.

Natasha 4:21

So yeah. But some dink, I wish I had a job, Russell, I'm not gonna lie. Someone else to pay the bills, make the decisions. And sure. People sometimes think that's so cool. Like such a cool story. And I'm like, you and I know all the agencies listening to this can be like. We would love someone else one day, some days to just be like, please. Right. But yeah, my entire adult life, I've always been self-employed, so.

Russel 4:45

Okay. What was your 12-year-old, uh, self-employment? What were you doing then?

Natasha 4:50

I was like the hottest babysitter, not hottest like physically, but like the hottest, like all the neighbors wanted me to babysit their kids because I have five younger siblings. So I came like very well trained, and so literally I was babysitting like seven nights a week. Like I,

Russel 5:05

oh my gosh,

Natasha 5:05

could not, some days it was two different clients a day, you know? And, uh, yeah, I, again, five younger siblings. I was like pre-trained. So yeah, I started babysitting like my neighbors and my cousins would get for money, and when I was like 12, so in my own little business.

Russel 5:23

Is that still a thing you, I know I feel like so many things from, from our childhood and, you know, the kids don't do anymore. Do kids still babysit? Is that a thing?

Natasha 5:31

I dunno. Like I have three teenage kids and none of them babysit. I dunno. That's a, they must, right? I dunno.

Russel 5:38

I dunno. I, I really, I don't know. I don't feel like we, I, now, I'm trying to think back. Did we, um, I feel like maybe a little bit, we must've used some kind of teenage babysitter, but

Natasha 5:46

I don't know, like we never did. I always had a nanny, like when my kids were little and we went out like we had a live out nanny or had my mom or had, you know, my ex's mom. I don't think I ever once had a teenager. I don't think I would've ever done that.

Russel 6:00

Okay. Yeah.

Natasha 6:00

But I also have three, so maybe that's the difference. I'm not sure. But

Russel 6:05

Alright, well, existential question we won't find out at least, uh, during the course of this conversation, but, uh,

Natasha 6:11

if anyone knows, leave a comment.

Russel 6:13

Yeah. So I guess just talk about, obviously you're having to learn at least some level of, what it is you're selling and to do it. But I mean, how did you even go about building from, like you're saying something you really didn't necessarily have the actual skillset and being able to do?

Natasha 6:30

No, people ask me that all the time because they're like, how did you end up doing that? And it's not even that we do like front end elementary sites. We do like build web apps. We build like. Tons of stuff with APIs and migrations and tons of variations in product. Like it's tricky stuff, like really, really tricky. And what happened was, is I, the team that I started with is more or less the team I still have now. And just as I, as they got better and better, I kept selling like smart people, new, challenging work, right? Or they get bored. Bored. So I would like start pushing the envelope in what I was selling. And there'd be times where I'd be like, I remember before we worked with Shopify, like years ago. I remember asking my, my team, I'm like, do you know how to work with like liquid code? Like, do you know how do Shopify? And they're like, no. I'm like, could you figure it out this weekend? And they're like, yes. And I would like sell a Shopify project and we'd like figure it out. And I always had really, really smart people on my team. I've always been very fortunate that they, they loved that kind of thing. Like they loved being thrown into the, against the wall and being like, thrown off the pier, like sink or swim. Like they all for whatever. I guess because I'm like that, like they were all like, let's do it. Let's go for it. I remember, like I sold this one project and it was like this React project that had like three different APIs. It was one of these like fill in this form, which then goes to DocuSign, which then goes to this Excel sheet, which then goes to a payment gateway, which then goes to this like thing and all these like autoresponders. And I'm thinking, I'm like, I have no idea what's going on in this project. Like, none at all. I have no idea what they're doing. And, I've always had a team that knows, I don't know. So they've always been very supportive and like my dev team is also incredible client facing. And one thing that's like, I used to think this was a huge disadvantage, but it's actually been a huge advantage that I'm not a technical person because the way the culture of the team is, the developers that come in have to be really good communicators, team players. They have to have good people skills because since the beginning, like we've worked Scrum style because I literally didn't know how to explain it. The requirements they needed, how to scope the work properly. And so I brought the developers in like from the get go and we would have these conversations working very Scrum like Scrum with the client and us and the qa, and we'd work on it together because I didn't know. Like, not now, but before I'm like, Hey, I'm the project manager, but I work with, you know, this incredible team of web developers are gonna go through the scope of work, watch this video playback, and then the next step will be is I'll follow up with any technical questions for you. And people never cared. They're like, okay, great. Like, they never were like, you know, like, so, because I know some people are really like ashamed of being worried about being put on the spot where they, the answer and I was like, it's just, it's on how you frame, right? Like if you're like, Hey, I'm the project manager, I'm not the web developer, but you know, on the back end there's all these smart people who are gonna know. They're like, great.

Russel 9:16

Yeah.

Natasha 9:16

So,

Russel 9:16

yeah. Yeah. I'm not surprised. Transparency and authenticity, it comes natural to you and imagine that is creates all the more connection in the sales process. But I'm just really curious sitting here of just, you know, especially hiring the first few developers or whatever to join your team. How did you know they could do what it is you needed them to do?

Natasha 9:36

Oh my gosh, that's such a good question too. So. I as it started getting more complicated, moving beyond like divvy sites and WordPress templates and things like that, once we actually started moving into like the custom code world, I actually would like have my colleagues who are developers do the interviews for me.'cause I didn't know, I had no way to assess their code quality. So what I would actually do would be to pay for a consult. I'd be like, Hey, can you take two to three hours? Bill me for your time and see if this guy's any good. Because in a previous life, I was a recruiter in the financial industry, so I was always really good at like knowing what I wanted, how to filter out applicants, like maybe do the soft skills review. But then when it came time to doing an actual like hard skills review, like code and, and all these things, I don't even know what they test for, but I knew I didn't know. And so I would pay a full stack developer that I knew that I trusted, or even I would sometimes put a job on Upwork saying, Hey, like looking for a consult to help me with my interviewing. And I'd pay someone two to three hours on Upwork. They'd interview the full stack developer. They would tell me, good or not, check their code, do code reviews as they were still new on the team. And that's how I built out my crew. I dunno, like.

Russel 10:46

Yeah.

Natasha 10:46

And I don't know. And I don't wanna know, like it doesn't exist me to know, like I don't have to know. That's not my lane. Right.

Life Takes a Turn

Russel 10:52

Keep it voodoo. No, I like that. It's soft skills important and ability to identify that are important as well. But yeah, I'm thinking here the interviews that I've sat in and when it got to the technical discussion as like. I think that sounded good, but I don't really know at the end of the day. And, uh, so yeah, that seems like a smart way to go about filling that gap for you. It sounds like things were humming along for you. Obviously you're growing and having some success and leaning further into a specific set of positioning, but. I also know at some point something happened that really forced you to think differently about your business. If you can take us back to what happened there.

Natasha 11:29

Oh, thank you. Yeah, so in 2024, I was 43 and I was diagnosed with stage two aggressive breast cancer, and I was 43. I had no genetic history like. Super healthy, like athletic, no smoking, no drinking, no nothing. And and I remember, and like most agency owners, it was just me running things, right? Like I didn't have a number two person. Like I had an assistant and I had a bookkeeper and I had a dev team. And, but it was just me running ops all day long. And my oncologist had told me, she was like, look, like I need you to find a way that you're not gonna be working because you're not gonna able to work through treatment. And, and I didn't know any different and I, and I knew enough to know like everybody's different. So. What am I gonna do? Like, oh my God, like I'm a one income household. I have three teenage kids, and if you have teenage boys, it's like ridiculous amount of money to keep them all fed and

Russel 12:20

made ridiculous amount of time and energy and everything. My gosh, I can't even imagine.

Natasha 12:24

I know eating my sons, it's like a part-time job. I'm like, how are you hungry again? Like. How is all of food gone? Like I literally just made dinner anyway. That's a different podcast episode. I'm like, I dunno, like most of my boys are tall. They're big. I'm like, I dunno where it all goes regardless. Right? Anyway, so those visions were flashing through my eyes of my children not having like five meals a day and. I remember thinking, I'm like, I had no option. Like I didn't have a spouse who was bringing in a paycheck. I didn't, obviously as agency owners, like we don't get EI or like, I don't, in Canada we call it ei. Like if you can't work like employment insurance, I was freaking out. I was losing my mind. I'm like, what am I gonna do? I had a team of people, I have bills, I had like business expenses, like I can't just lay off my team because I have cancer, and then what am I gonna do now? Because I need the income too. Like, I can't just not have an income. And my agency was my full-time income, obviously. And so I had a, a friend of mine who was actually, had been my client for four years and I knew her. She was the project manager, like at the e-commerce company where we, one of my clients. And I knew she was spectacular. Like I knew, we loved working with her. She was like my favorite client of all time. And she had gotten laid off from where she'd been working. She was on mat leave and stuff with her baby and I'm like. I don't know where you're at right now, but like if you have any availability, can you just come in and like cover for until I can just get this figured out? Because she knew my team, she knew what we did. Like she'd worked with most of my team before so she knew them and they knew her, so it wasn't like a stranger, right. Coming in and taking over.

Russel 13:59

Mm-hmm.

Natasha 14:00

My team knew and I'm like, Hey guys, like this woman is coming in. This is the situation on my end. Everyone was super supportive. I told all my clients, they were like, absolutely let me know what you need. So she comes in. And she had actually had a vacation planned, for a couple weeks. Like I had six weeks between I was diagnosed and I was scheduled for a bilateral mastectomy reconstruction, like where they take both sides and they rebuild both sides. And, and so we had four weeks to start some training. We to do training to run a business that I've been running for a decade. And it was all in my head as all of us do. I had my team had documented their stuff, but I'd never taken the time. So I was just like what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? Million dollar question, right? I work from home. It's not like I'm in a car accident.

Russel 14:45

What's up? I mean, like how long? I mean, this is just, I mean, one, just, gosh. I mean, what a, what a just a, a devastating conversation. Forget business even for a second, just personally to have to navigate that, but are you setting this up the next day after you found out, how are you Yeah. Literally processing all this,

Natasha 15:02

literally, like I got the call and like within that same week I was like. I have to make a decision because it was, yeah, it was like September, middle of September I was diagnosed and then I had surgery scheduled for the end of October and I was all of a sudden in, in panic mode, right? I had been told that I wouldn't be able to work. I'd been in a lot of pain. It was an eight week recovery, and I just took the word for it, right? I didn't know, like I didn't wanna assume that I would be able to work, because what if I couldn't? Then what? I knew I needed a backup plan, but the kick thing was is I didn't have the money to pay her. I didn't have like a$5,000 a month extra amount of money just sitting around. So I had no idea how I was gonna like pay her, pay me, pay my team, pay all my bills and not be working. I'm like, that map was like terrifying to me. So what did I end up doing? I can't imagine. It was like I was losing my mind. I was like terrified and so I went to the bank. So I had savings, but I was like, I didn't know if it was gonna burn it by me not working. If we sell nothing else over the next six months, like, you know, that was what was going through my head, right? So anyway, so I went to the bank. I got a loan to cover six months of her payroll because I'm like, look, if I can just pay her to keep at least existing projects, running, keep stuff moving, be available, just to keep this moving while I'm going through treatment. I'll figure it out when I get back. Like, I'm like, if we're dead and bankrupt, like, okay, I'm gonna have to live with that. I had no option. You know, like I had to keep, I couldn't lay off my team. I needed the money. So I'm like, it was like rocking a hard place, right? I had to make that call. So I hired her and we did a lot of training. I'm not gonna lie, I feel so bad for her. Her training was a lot, a combination of me, like high on painkillers or on my ass from chemo. It was not like, oh, this is organized. Let's review the SOPs. It was like us FaceTiming and me like wanting to die because. But she got through it. She did it, and then she was a rock star. She would call me sometimes and because she's my friend, like obviously there was days that sometimes I'd have to come to the computer and we'd have to do a video call and I'd be like, bleeding and like bandages and like feeling so sick and she was fine and we got through it, but it was just like not. What I would recommend is an onboarding experience for anybody.

Russel 17:13

And, uh, I mean, that's a, that's probably a given. Yeah.

Natasha 17:17

Anyway, so then when I came back in May, like came back to work full-time in May, like from October to May, I was working I would say like part-time ish, because there was windows where I felt like okay, enough to work, but it wasn't like every day and every week it was very hit and miss, like when I felt like I could work. But when I came back full-time in May, I felt good chemo was done. I was like, okay, I feel good. It's handled, it's over. And she was like, Hey, just to let you know., I got this. I don't need you. I don't need you here, and I don't want you here. Now that you're back, I don't want you meddling in my process. And it turned out I didn't need that money. Coming back in May was my second biggest month I'd ever had in our, in my career. And I was just blown away. I'm like, oh my God. And it didn't fall apart. To this day, I'm like, I don't know. I don't even know what happened there. I don't know. And yeah, so that was the crazy story. And now I'm out of the agency. I'm out of the day to day, so I do biz dev, I do networking. She does some biz dev, I'm the hunter, she's the farmer. So she does all the internal marketing and I've always been in direct sales. So I love that kind of external side. But you know, I maybe do two hours a day in the agency maybe. Just not in the agency, but dev networking calls, things like that, and I started project. It was crazy. It was a crazy, crazy, crazy ride for sure.

Russel 18:34

The craziest of rides, I mean, one, before we even get back to business this health wise, how are you doing today? How was that for you?

Natasha 18:43

I'm good. Thankfully, like I was cancer free after surgery in 2024, but because of the type of cancer it was all preventative chemo and so I went into chemo, not even like quote unquote having cancer. And then I had my last follow-up surgery in January of this year. So I am. Cancer free. But it's just been so funny because since I've been talking about cancer and stuff on LinkedIn, I've had probably seven different other agency owners who have had breast cancer or are in breast cancer. And we started a little WhatsApp group, talking about like our breast cancer. It's just been, it's been a really cool way to support other, literally all these other agency women who are just like DMing me like, oh, my own mastermind.

Making a Successor Successful

Russel 19:26

Niches as it makes sense to go down. And while I'm glad to hear you're healthy, I'm glad to hear you're doing great. And I mean really just to me, an unfathomable journey to be in this, I mean, like you're saying this, I don't know if there's a bigger rock and a hard place situation that you could be in. Mm-hmm. And I mean, just even going back to that one great that you found somebody that you could know, but how are you just managing. Your personal needs, your mental health needs. While it sounds like, what was this, a huge amount of work to get someone to take over your business?

Natasha 20:01

It was really hard. As you know, I'm not the kind of person who's gonna blow smoke. Like it was really hard. There was a lot of terror, a lot of crying, a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of panic attacks because like. I was so terrified that I was just gonna burn through all the money. I was so scared. And then I'm like, what am I gonna do? Like, how am I gonna take care of my kids? How am I gonna, I was just, would have these nightmares of just all the money, like just going out the window, like paying everybody and paying us stuff. And so, no, definitely I'm not gonna lie, like I was seeing a therapist through a lot of this process. Which is very common. And obviously too when you're going through chemo, like you've got a lot of medi like drugs in your system, so you're not thinking straight anyway, right? Like, so if you've been anxious anyway, when you're feeling like awful, you're gonna be that much more anxious. And I mean, it was definitely like the biggest mental health hurdle I've ever been through in my life. I'm so grateful. I had a lot of support from my family, my family, my extended my siblings, and. My friends, and it was, I think any personal crisis is not a one man show. It's a village. You cannot do it by yourself. There's no way, like my mom would come over and she'd walk the dogs because I couldn't even walk enough to walk my dog, you know? And then my son took over cooking, so he took over all the cooking and then my, this woman took over my, you know, took over the running the business and someone else, so it was definitely not me being any kind of hero. It was. The entourage definitely getting the job done. So

Russel 21:34

glad glad you were having that and one saving grace. And if, I dunno if it came out earlier that at least it seems like I would assume something you didn't have to think about is where you're at in Canada that you weren't mounting insane.

Natasha 21:48

Oh, thank God.

Russel 21:49

Medical bills like you would be if you were, in the US

Natasha 21:54

Yeah, no, thank God for that because yeah, I didn't pay anything. I mean, I paid. A lot of the, like some of the pharmaceuticals like buying like medicine painkillers and stuff like that. But no, I don't even know supposedly the treatment I had would've between the surgeries. Well, not even the chemo, I don't even know. But yeah, the surgeries would've been like$35,000, just the surgery.

Russel 22:13

Oh, easy. I'm

Natasha 22:13

sure.

Russel 22:13

Yeah. And

Natasha 22:14

I, yeah, that's one less thing I my heart breaks to think about the alternatives. Right. What it could have been, for sure.

Russel 22:23

Yeah. Alright, well. Again, glad to hear you're on the other side of this. Glad you know. I think you found some support while you're going through this and you found support afterwards and so that's great to hear in the world. One of the things that's just swimming through my mind as you're sharing this and is where is this balance of and right? This is probably every aspect of entrepreneurship. What was lucky and what did you feel you engineered about, this state that you've really created where someone could come in and help you or help you essentially

Natasha 22:58

mm-hmm.

Russel 22:58

Run your business for you?

Natasha 23:01

That's a great question. I know a lot of agency owners since hearing this story have asked me like, oh my gosh, where did you meet her? And then when I tell her that she was a friend of mine, people think because I didn't have to work, hire her cold. Like I knew her. I trusted her. I already had known her as a client. She knew my team. So I think that was probably what I would qualify, maybe as lucky. But I had kept in touch with her. I knew enough. I think it was a skill to know that I saw that skill set in her. I was a recruiter. I knew what to look for. I knew Tod be a good fit culturally, skill wise. She was not a technical project manager. She was a marketing project manager, so she knew nothing about web development at all. So there was a huge learning curve. We definitely lost some clients along the way. She didn't, the difference between a DNS and a cms, like she had no idea and, but she figured it out and the team helped her, and I helped her as I could. That she was safe and she was protected and she was encouraged and empowered to sometimes make choices that were like killing me. You know? Like I would watch it and it's like watching a car accident, like certain choices she made with my clients that like burned us out of a couple clients. But I couldn't do anything. I was too sick. Like I couldn't even pick up the phone to call her and be like, don't do that. I just watched it burn down before my eyes, you know? And um, that's how you learn, right? And so we think, does that answer the question?

Russel 24:18

Absolutely answers the question. I mean, I say that just in the notion that it seems like for those that have listened to how I built this out there, that's what they ask. You know, and they have the big successful companies come on the podcast and they ask'em at the end was at Luck, ORs at Skill. And every answer is some semblance of it was both, which it is truly always a mix of both. It was, and you think about it and to your point, maybe it's not, the word isn't always luck because it's, it's opportunity meets preparation and oppor and, and it sounds like, you know, a have to event met this, you know, when I'm guessing you have a pretty wide network and you see people and you understand people and like you said, you evaluate skills. These all met together to give you this, which was in like you're sharing a horrible life moment. This right person, right time. Only because you were able to see that.

Natasha 25:04

Yeah.

Russel 25:06

Okay. Well, I guess I'm more curious about like this, just the half to moments of all, half to moments when you think back, like how could you have done this without the half to moment?

Natasha 25:18

Oh geez. Like you don't even know how many times I've kicked myself, like, why didn't I think about this before? It was a crisis. And a lot of founders don't, we just don't. We don't do succession planning. We don't do any kind of prep, you know, we just think something's gonna happen. Like I have a colleague of mine and she was hit by a car and she was in a coma for two weeks and her, she, her team didn't even know where she was. You know, like her mom had to go online and open up her email. Her team didn't, had no way to know what was going on. And she was in a coma, at least I was conscious. Do you know what I mean? I was conscious, if I had to, I could get on a call. Worst case. And I might've been sick, but I could have done it. And so I think like people think, oh, it's not gonna happen to me, but I wish I would've gotten this together like five years ago, five before I had, I had to I wish I'd had a succession plan in place. That I could have used, even if I didn't need it. Looking back on it now, I would never, I'm lucky I survived that. The business survived that. Do you know what it, it was, it should not have made it through that, based on how chaotic it was. And so I'm very grateful that it did, and there was a lot of hustle on everybody's part to like keep that moving. But yeah. Anybody listening, if you haven't put succession planning in, and I've been working on it myself now again, because like, what if it happened again? What if I ever realized, who knows, right? Like what if, right? Anything could happen. So one of the things I've been working through, like using AI prompts and stuff like that is how do I create a succession plan? What does that mean? Like stupid things. Like I gave her access to my LastPass account. Like she didn't even have access to that before. Right. Like she had no way to share passwords with anyone on the team. Now she's, I've been on my last pass, like, little things like that, right? Like, if you couldn't come to work, you know, one of my developers this last week had a heart attack and he's like 30. So it was super weird outta the glue. And it's like that same thing, like how do you do that knowledge transfer to the next guy, right? Making sure that the documentation, you have all the information, you have all the assets organized, you have all the stuff, so it can easily move to the next person. It's the same thing.

Russel 27:32

Yeah.

Natasha 27:32

Right. At all levels. But knowing he's there to back her, I'm like, okay. Like I don't need to hold that mental space for it.

Russel 27:40

It makes me think of the quote I heard and it really, really sticks with me. I feel like it's one of the more fundamental quotes to how I try to approach and not always successful with, but it's the problem is we think we have time.

Natasha 27:53

Yeah, we do. Yeah. I can definitely attest to that.

Russel 27:57

We never know how much time we have in any capacity. And, um, yeah, time is a whole weird thing into itself. But

Natasha 28:05

yeah,

Russel 28:07

this, it seems like this underlying question that, that would be good to at least ask is. How can you create this almost false have to moment of what would you do if it couldn't be you? And what would you do? Kind of like what you're saying, just go down the train. If it couldn't be, uh, Sam and it couldn't be, I'm gonna, I always use really old names when I use name examples, like, I'm gonna say Betty and, and all this stuff. The names they don't use anymore. But yeah, if it can't be those people, then, then what would you do? How do you account for the agency? Not. Relying on a single individual, but the system, the process, the construct that makes it repeatable.

Natasha 28:45

Yeah, exactly.

Russel 28:47

And answer that question and, and, and probably not in a day, but can you go down the path of answering that question? So it sounds like it's informed at least, right? You had the have to moment where you had to do this one position, but it sounds like it's still informing how you're going about

Natasha 29:02

Yeah.

Russel 29:02

All the rest of the positions in your business as you're going forward.

Natasha 29:05

Yeah, definitely. We had a situation last year where. You have one of these projects that everything could go wrong. You know, like everything could go wrong. Like one of the guys, we had like this certain amount of developers on this really big project. One, you know that his location got hit by a natural disaster. He had no wifi for seven days and then the other one had a medical issue and then the other one had someone in their family die. And it was just like this domino of developers, like not available. And we ended up having to bring in these new developers. That transfer of knowledge process was crazy. And so we really doubled down on okay, even more, we need to eliminate the key man problem, right? Of No, we need documentation at every level. Because again, you never think, you're like, yeah, he's submitted to this project, like you said, one of my guys had a heart attack and he's 30. Right? Who knows, there's genetic history there, who knows what's going on, but like no one would've anticipated that. But that's the whole point is to like, it needs to be able to move. Even if you don't think you're gonna need to use it, it needs to be there. So,

Russel 30:12

yeah.

Natasha 30:13

Yeah. We're putting it everywhere, like at every level, so.

Russel 30:17

Okay. How are, how do you deal with, right? I think a common problem can be with agencies or really probably any business is what someone does, can be a shifting landscape at times and what might, right. If you sat down and, and did this work to remove some of this redundancy or create some of this redundancy, um, things might change. So how do you keep up with the moving target of what is changing?

Natasha 30:48

In, in like the sense of like AI or something like that,

Russel 30:51

just like a role and just what, how work gets done and who does what and, and those different dynamics.

Natasha 30:57

Um, that's a great point. Okay. So we encourage everyone to keep their own departmental processes up to date. We have someone on the team who's in charge of like r and d. And so for like the developers. So he goes to see what's new in the world, what's happening, and then he comes back and he teaches the team. We have a QA guys who are always like, Hey, go find new, are there new tools now with all this ai? Like are there better tools that we can be using? And so we like really encourage like our team to constantly be improving their own processes and they bill me for that time to do it. So it's not like self-help stuff, it's them constantly updating their role, their job description, their tools, their approach, so we try to be as current as we can, like especially now in the world of like to say AI like tech is changing so quickly as we all know. And it's like there's so many things maybe that. We used to do manually that maybe we don't do anymore. Okay. Well if we don't need to do them anymore, how does that affect your billing and how does that affect your proposal and how does that, like there's so many, one little thing can have this like ripple effect and I think, we owe it to our client to do our best. I mean, it's impossible. It changes every 10, 25 seconds. But to be, do our best to least be on top of it so that every client's getting the most honest proposal and the most honest, the most. Game plan and things like that.

Russel 32:26

Okay. What I'm hearing there and seeing and, and Right. This is just always proof and this is what I love about this podcast is it just shows there's a million ways to go about running an agency business, but that rather than being worried about from a management leadership perspective of I. Having to oversee all of this process and whatever, you're actually building it from the bottom up, from the, call it the individual user. They're responsible for their own guide of how they do their job, and you're baking that into your culture and your process and you're, as you said, paying them. And that's something that's a responsibility for them to keep up with. Uh mm-hmm. At an individual level, it takes away just some of that pain and headache of how do we stay on top of all this? Mm-hmm. Well, you don't, you just make it part of an individual's responsibility.

Natasha 33:09

And maybe if I was a developer, like, because I know a lot of developers going to lead developer agencies, but I couldn't like, but I also look at it too. I'm like, they don't know about sales. They can't do my job, so why would I invest my time in learning how to do their job? They're not taking sales classes or marketing or learning about content marketing. They're not doing any of that. So why do I have to learn about code? It doesn't make sense. So we all kind of just like stay in our lane. And then as it comes up and as they do the team meetings, like I don't go to team meetings anymore, but I know at team meetings they talk about, okay, what are we, what's new? Like, what's going on? What are we working on this week? Again, very scrum, right? Like bottlenecks or blockers or whatever, and they. Crowds for solutions. Like we were having this glitchy Shopify thing the other day. My project manager was telling me, and she's like, we're running to this glitch with Shopify and it was doing this and that and this. And she says it to me, she's like, well, what do you think? I'm like, I think you need to talk to a developer. I dunno. And she's like, okay. I'm like, I dunno. Like, I dunno. I have no idea like why it's doing that. I don't know. So she's like, let ask you first. So I'm like, why? Like, why would you wanna say, I dunno.

Russel 34:14

Well, it, it almost just really plays back into the strength. If you don't know, you don't have an ego about it to think you know best, so you can default to end user as well, to have the experience, the expertise, the know-how. And that even of itself, when I hear you talk about this process gives ownership, which is so important in this whole game anyway, that they own their role, they own their expertise, and. If only even just witnessing your story, own the continuity of their role.

Natasha 34:44

Yeah.

Russel 34:44

Yeah.

Natasha 34:45

When I, I get to a lot of them, they love what they do, so they wanna get better at it. You know, they literally wanna, they wanna know how to be better and more competitive and grow their skills and, and we give raises. So like, as you provide more value to the team and you. Like you're, I will give you a raise. Like as you prove to me that you are worth more money, I will pay you more. And so I try to make it worth a while. So it's not just like you do all this work and make all these changes and you're the same. Like no, like I will give you raises as I feel they are merited. And um, so I definitely try to make it worth a while to be better at what you do. So. Yeah, it's not just an arbitrary race. Like, oh, okay, you've been here for a year and, but you're the same. I'm like, mm, I don't know. I have to up level all the time. Like so do you. I don't know. Like it's just for me, I have to respond to like the economy changing all the time. Like, that's on me. So you guys gotta do your part too. I never say it like that, but it's definitely, and it's also to a culture of and one thing that, my project manager told me when I came back is she's you've gotta let me fail. Like, that was one part of her whole, like, I don't need you. And, and watching her make these mistakes, that it's just watching a car accident and I couldn't even do anything about it. And she's like, you have to let me fail. That's the only way I'm gonna learn. And so, and I, I, and it's happened so many times on a project where over the. Something has gone so badly and a client's mad, or we make a mistake or outta ignorance, something goes wrong and whatever. And I've really tried to create a culture on the team that I'm not gonna fire you from making a mistake. If you were trying something new. And if you are like trying, if you're making a mistake because you're not paying attention and you're being lazy and you're making the same mistake over and over, I'm gonna fire you. No question about it. But if you're sincerely doing your best and something goes wrong. And you didn't know, and it was an honest mistake. I'm not gonna fire you for that. So I've really tried to create a culture of learning and taking risks and knowing that I could be the one as the founder with the egg on my face. But I always feel it's a worthwhile investment in the team. Like all the times I've been like, Hey, can you learn chop off by this weekend? And he's like, yeah, sure. And it's a huge gamble. Like it could go so badly, but. It rarely goes that badly. It usually like comes out like, well,

Russel 36:58

yeah, this even asking that. Assign ownership, right? Can you go learn about this? Can you're, you're going to be taking on this responsibility. Can you go do this? Yeah. And, I feel like we could have a whole part too, just about the failure concept. And one of the things I always end up sharing with owners is, look, you are who you are and the skills you have because you've failed endless amounts of times by the role you've been in. And we've got to figure out more and more as agency owners how to. Create that same or similar side of the circumstances with our team or they'll never get to where I know sometimes a lot of owners get frustrated is why can't they do it like me? Well, you gotta give them that.

Natasha 37:37

Yeah. They need the time

Russel 37:38

ownership and that time, that responsibility and that permission to fail and yeah, that can be, it can be a tough thing to do.

Natasha 37:46

Yeah. Safety. Like you are not gonna lose your job

Russel 37:49

safety. Yes.

Natasha 37:50

I think,'cause I feel like I've had really good retention. I think in 10 years I've had one person leave the team. And one thing I've always tried to do is to create a place where then yeah, like I'm here to support you achieving what you need. So if your goal is to get better at your React skills, let's say for example, okay, like I will go and do my best to sell React projects and you can figure it out and learn it. And I'm gambling huge that they're not gonna drop the ball. Like I'm really gambling on but I also know my team and I know they're smart as hell and I know they're not gonna put me in a bad position if they can avoid it. Right. So we've also, like I said, I've also invested in like a QA guy, who does like all the checks and all the code reviews and stuff now. So there's way less risk. But yeah, creating that sense of safety. I know you can do this, and if you can't, we're gonna be okay. We'll figure it out. You know, it's gonna be okay.

Russel 38:39

Yeah, love that. That's amazing. It's so funny you're sitting there saying, and, and Right. This is all things just conjure up memories and we actually called our management role in our company Anzeneer, which is derived from the Japanese word of Anzen, which means safety, and their role was to create safety for the team. And that's, and that, is such an important concept. So, I appreciate you sharing that. Well, gosh, Natasha, such a fascinating conversation and, obviously this was derived from. Have to, uh, the worst of have tos unfortunately. But I think there's some inspiration that we can certainly take as listeners to forecast or formulate our own, have to or otherwise build more redundancy resiliency in the business that doesn't rely on any one individual. And the quicker and sooner you do that, the stronger business you'll have.

Born or Made?

Natasha 39:32

Yeah, absolutely.

Russel 39:35

Well, beautiful. Well, I got one last big question for you then. Entrepreneurs born, are they made,

Natasha 39:41

mate? A hundred percent being an entrepreneur is about resilience to handling risk, being attaching more pleasure to challenges and risk taking and adventure. And I think so much of what the, the personality profile of an entrepreneur is. I mean, this is a very like philosophical subject to me, but it's I think a lot of it is if you were like a kid and you wanted to set up your lemonade stand and your parents like gave you so much negativity for it, and they were like, that's dumb. You need da da, you're never gonna do it. But if you were the kid who had the lemonade stand and your mom sits up the umbrella and your dad goes hands out flyers, it's a very different situation. So I think a lot of it is. Without getting too deep into my trauma obsession is, I think a lot of it is a reinforcement we receive in the experiences we have and our interpretation of those circumstances when we're growing up. And so if playing it safe, quote unquote, becomes more of a negative, like for me, both my parents were entrepreneurs and I mean, neither one of them very successful, but you know, I never was around someone who had a job. So to me it was never even something that was modeled to me, do you know? But if I'd been raised by like two, nine to five people, would I be an entrepreneur? I dunno, probably not. Do you know what I mean? So I think it's made, I think it's totally made. I think

Russel 41:12

that's a pretty good case for the maid side. All right, we'll put another notch in the maid, but yeah, great perspective there. Well, if people wanna know more about on purpose projects, where can they go

Natasha 41:23

head over to my website on Purpose projects com or LinkedIn? LinkedIn is my home base. Come find me there. Say hi. Say you tell me on the chat with Russell and I would love to meet you. I love meeting other agency. Yes, I love it.

Russel 41:38

Yes, I can self attest to you. Produced lots of great content on LinkedIn, so definitely check her out there, folks. My gosh, Natasha, thank you so much for sharing so many wonderful lessons that just the, just the power and the need and the importance of creating redundancy in the business and setting other people up for success, creating an environment for safety. So many great nuggets we were able to take away from today and really appreciate you taking the time to share those with us.

Natasha 42:06

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Russel 42:08

Likewise. Thank you for listening to an agency story podcast where every story helps you write your own, subscribe, share, and join us again for more real stories, lessons learned, and breakthroughs ahead. What's next? You'll want to visit an agency story.com/podcast and follow us on Instagram at an agency story for the latest updates

Natasha 42:32

at one point. My entire dev team was Brazilian and it wasn't,'cause I were like headhunted in Brazil. It just like, one was in Vancouver, one was in Brazil, one was like in Argentina. It was just all these Brazilians on the team and Brazilians love soccer. So when something was really, really good, the emoji we used on Slack was always the soccer ball. So it's like, you're like, that's like fucking soccer ball quality dude. Like, and so it was so funny'cause I remember when I brought someone in and they were like, what's. What's this like? What does this mean? And I had to explain to'em. I'm like, no, soccer is like the ultimate, not the thumbs up, not the fireworks. It's like you get a soccer ball, you are like made, man, you are like a made develop, like, so yeah, it was cute. It's always cute whenever I see that like amongst themselves, like they give each other little soccer balls, but we're like, oh, like it's sweet. Right? It's cute.